Am I Corn or Kale?

We ended the last post on gelato, so we’ll start this one with gelato.

Although not intermittently, it rained every day we were in Lucca. Locals explained they’ve never seem this kind of weather in usually beautiful May, and that it was a shame. I didn’t care — Lucca was awesome. We stayed in the labyrinthine city centre, within the city’s famous and still solid medieval walls. The streets were narrow and paved not with asphalt but with old stone slabs, all of which did not stop the occasional car from driving dangerously close to people, buildings, bikers. The citta’ is full of character and would also constitute superb grounds for a game of “capture the flag”.

The rain made us feel less guilty about spending a lot of time online booking/planning our next few stops, something we sorely needed to get done — and did. When the weather cooperated, we had plenty to do: walking and biking along the walls (they are wide and up to 25 years ago, cars drove on them; now they’re only open to pedestrians and bikers), eating gelato, climbing Torre Guinigi for an aerial view of the city, walking some more and getting lost often. We visited a few churches, one of which featured the properly illuminated mummy of St. Zita.

Lucca was the first city that defied (and defeated) my map drawing ability, and we walked aimlessly for a while before finally finding our hotel. Eventually we arrived at the place that my relatives in Lucca booked for us; the cost was steeper than we would have liked, even though it was the cheapest B&B within the ancient walls — we’re in Tuscany and that‘s how it goes. Our hosts at the hotel were loud and enthusiastic, and every morning we had a filling breakfast that included a slice of delicious bucellato, Lucca’s traditional pastry.

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The primary reason for our visit to Lucca was meeting my relatives, and I’m happy to say the experience exceeded my expectations. I won’t blab about my family tree here, but it was fantastic and a bit surreal to visit the house that my great-great-grandfather built over a hundred years ago, in which members of the Betti famiglia still live. We met my grandfather’s cousin Gianpaolo, who is 80 and eerily resembles my own grandpa when he was alive. What’s crazier, they were both bankers during their career — one in Sao Paulo, the other in Lucca. Go figure.On Thursday night we went out to dinner with Gian Luca and Giacomo, Gianpaolo’s sons. They introduced us to typical Lucchesi cuisine, and we had the best meal of our Italy trip. Fried polenta with mushroom ragu, a platter of cheese and cured meats (including the infamous lardo, which is what you think it is, but sliced very thin and with a subtly spicy seasoning, which makes it delicious and therefore wrong). Our main course was the classic tortelli with ragu, followed by sweet-and-tart strawberries for dessert, all accompanied by some great red wine. Wine in Italy does not disappoint: it costs as much as Boone’s Farm yet with the quality of a $10-plus bottle.

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Giacomo suggested that we take a day trip to Pisa because it is only a 25-minute train ride away. We did so on Saturday and visited the famous Miracle Square featuring a large-domed basilica, lots of dumb-looking tourists and the iconic Leaning Tower. Despite its obvious fault, the tower is undeniably beautiful and we’re sure it would be fun to go up on top if it wasn’t for the long line and the prohibitive 15-Euro charge. We opted for staying on the ground and admiring the surroundings.

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On Sunday night Gian Luca met us at the B&B and we walked with him out of Porta Sant’Anna to the Palazzi Betti that my great-great-grandpa (Gian Luca and Giacomo’s great-grandfather) built with the capital he earned in Brazil. His name, Egysto Betti, is discreetly engraved on one of the outside walls; slightly less subtle metalwork featuring his initials along the banister on the stairway, so if you look from the side you see EB-EB-EB-EB-EB going all the way up. The ceiling on the ground floor was 4 meters high, and to me the place had the most bizarre mix of “historical” and “personal” I have ever experienced.Gian Luca lives on the ground floor apartment with his wife Alita and two children, Matilde and Giulio, who are technically on the same Betti generation as me. Upstairs lives Gianpaolo and his wife Franca, who came down to meet an talk to us; despite the language barrier, we were able to understand quite a bit of Italian; wild hand and arm gesticulations sure helped drive points across. Giacomo also paid us a visit, along with his son Alessandro. The children were kind and positively excited about the visit. Matilde gladly showed Norika her collection of stickers, and Giulio played with miniature cars just like I did when I was his age. Alita sacrificed her Mother’s Day rest and fixed a delicious dinner for us, and we chatted away about soccer and Formula 1 and more soccer and the 2010 World Cup and the 1994 one and 1982 and 2006 and so on — you get the idea.  It was a delightful time that made our trip to Lucca even worthier, and very, very special.

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On Monday we took an early afternoon train to Florence and the eight hours we spent there deserve about a paragraph. Its main museums were closed on that day (including the Uffizi, which holds what is generally regarded as the best Renaissance collection in the world) so our sightseeing options were more limited. First we visited the Duomo — though we did not climb up to get a really good look at it, the amazingly detailed outside of the cathedral was perhaps more impressive. Once again in the rain, we walked around a square displaying violent statues, toward the old city and briefly among the bourgeois shoppers at Ponte Vecchio. It was not our scene, so we went in search of our last, glorious gelato. Three-flavor combos: mango, raspberry, and then coconut (for me) and dark chocolate (for Norika). We had a decent pizza and wine dinner and then back to chaotic train station.

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We had previously reserved seats on the Rome-Vienna train (our ride was from Florence to the Austrian town of Bruck ad Mur) and were shocked to find out that we were to occupy the middle seats of a packed six-person cabin (there were already four young people and a lot of luggage). No one was happy with the arrangement and eventually one of our cabin mates negotiated a seat change. The rest of us were subjected to a rough night of uncomfortable sleep and sore necks; we’re very glad that’s the last overnight ride of our entire trip.

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